Filming paintball

[Jordan]

Why does paintball HAVE to be filmed like other sports, and why does it HAVE to be televised? Why does it HAVE to be in the Olympics? Why does it HAVE to offer million dollar professional salaries like NFL and MLB?

Apparently that's how we grow the sport.

[Brokeass_baller]

Apparently that's how we grow the sport.

By creating spectators? The success of the MLB has little to no affect on the number of church and city softball leagues are in operation. Look at volleyball, and racquetball. Very popular pastimes, no real major league support. I think paintball can not only exist in that environment, but flourish. Getting people to PLAY will grow the sport. Getting people to WATCH probably won't do much at all.

[Brokeass_baller]

That's actually a really well thought out comparison. I could see paintball of every play style working similarly to video game streams. Everybody can wear an FPS camera, and a birds-eye wire cam or drone could film it all, and the viewer would bounce back and forth between it all. Show off your gear, recommend your sponsors, etc, and I think it could make money.

[vijil]

Yeah I think it could work. Even phones can livestream now after all.

One thing I don't get is the fitness thing or lack of it. If I were starting a field, I'd be playing up the fitness hobby aspect and targeting professionals. Same basic value proposition as social weeknight leagues. Heck build a gym into the facility. Heck, literally make it a social weeknight league. Have coaches who get people hyped and take groups through both the gym routines and the paintball games. 15 minute warmup and stretch, 25 minute league game (skills training if no game), 15 minute HIIT and cooldown session. Recommended diets. Merch galore. Paintball based workouts. Personalised programs if you pay more. F45 with added shooties. I know I'd be throwing money at someone if they offered that, but would you?

[Brokeass_baller]

I for sure would. I think that sounds awesome. Like cross fit paintball.

[Jordan]

By creating spectators? The success of the MLB has little to no affect on the number of church and city softball leagues are in operation. Look at volleyball, and racquetball. Very popular pastimes, no real major league support. I think paintball can not only exist in that environment, but flourish. Getting people to PLAY will grow the sport. Getting people to WATCH probably won't do much at all.

I guess I should have annotated an /s on the end.

I completely agree with you.

[Brokeass_baller]

I think I was arguing more for the audiences sake. Lol.

[SignOfZeta]

If think if paintball ever became a real sport it would then be much easier to film. That is, gun classification, playing actual positions, something other than selling paint as a measure of success, etc. Some sort of…goal or point. As it is paintball is basically rednecks alternating between hiding and unloading on each other, usually resulting in total elimination and learning who won and what actually happened after the fact. What kind of “sports narrative” can you illustrate for the viewer when the player doesn’t even know what’s going on?

As it is I very much enjoy seeing interesting moments caught on camera but as for the actual flow of the game…don’t care. It’s only fun to watch when you’re playing it.

[Euphie]

When I think about this the best cheap way I could think of would be filming three person games with two overhead cameras, and each player with a GoPro and just edit it for consumption. Live media seems more like a broadcast relic IMO, it isn’t like we are going to read about the game in the newspaper in the morning we are going to watch it on demand.

Centerflag 20 points for the pull and 10 points an elim 5 minute time. Best 2/3. Simple and easy.

[vijil]

Huh, no points for the hang?

Actually, that would absolutely work. The hang is just a formality. You're just making it so the pull (or hitting the center buzzer effectively) is worth 2 elims. So a team could win a round even if they are all shot out, so long as they shoot two of the other team and get the pull.

I like it. It's just enough extra depth to make things more tactical, and it encourages moving up the field aggressively, and adds a focal point at the beginning.

[Euphie]

The idea is to keep it aggressive with the Centerflag single pull and it could be an interesting strategic choice. I played a novice tournament with similar though more complicated rules and even though we lost 2 games in a row to third place we finished second because we had one crazy person with a PGP running for the flag because his autococker wasn’t working. It worked a lot of the time because our whole strategy off the break was to cross it up and try and get the pull, then if we got it rush as we could take the risk on points.

After that it opened my mind to the possibilities, though in this novice tournament we had lots of superfluous stuff like points for the hang and points for bodies left alive, etc but it seems to me that if both teams time out with no eliminations no one should be getting any points. When you strip it down though you kinda get to the rules I would like to see.

[vijil]

Makes sense.

I'd suggest two things

1, make it 4v4. 3man is a little too "first kill wins" based on my experience, and although the flag pull helps alleviate that, I think 4 is still a better number. That's just me though.

2, on points, consider making a kill worth one and a pull worth three points (multiples of ten isn't necessary really). In playtesting, see how often the flag comes into play during the game. If it's too often, make it worth less. If it's not enough, make it worth more. Ideally I think you'd want people going for the flag before shooting everyone at least 40% of points.